Tag: blogging

Bitter Sweet

55a91b169b327_straw-med

Its cold, obviously, in Chicago. The irony is that this week has been like Chicago’s cold bitter wind and the warmth of the sun on my cheeks at the same time. Similar to how the sun is just strong enough to warm the ground but not the wind. Like the sharpness of a very dark chocolate. While  the book release and trip to Atlanta has been sweet, the call that my mother has fallen ill has left my mouth with the bitter taste of a strong coffee with no cream and no sugar.

Truth is I just want to go somewhere and hide. The new book is exciting and the signing and presentation went very well. In addition, the play following was amazing. This thick, syrupy goodness I will hold on my tongue always.

Immediately following the play, I jumped on a plane to Chicago and have not been home since then. Instead, I’ve been back and forth to the hospital everyday while simultaneously promoting my new book and balancing other priorities. In addition, my husband is having surgery on his knees soon which means I’ll be leaving the Chi soon.

But you know me. The grind must go on. I hope to be fully engaged in this blog soon with my regular obsessive postings! Lol

Y’all be great.

– EC

SILVER’S BOOK REVIEWS – “Stella – A Short Story,” and Joseph’s Story – The Road to Freedom,” BY Yecheilyah Ysrayl

Colleen Reviews The Stella Trilogy. Check it out. I am still out of town but pics of yesterday’s signing are coming soon. It was beautiful!

For Rose – A Story in a Single Image

unsplash-04

The city never afforded her body the chance to be this intimately part of creation in the way to which her eyes were now experiencing. The sun danced splashes of yellows on her skin and the light immersed her body into the landscape. Forty-two acres of earth welcomed Chelsea until her eyes were not big enough to hold all of it at one time. The sun seemed to come down from the sky to personally greet her and she felt a closeness to the heavens like never before. It was as if she could reach up to the sky and capture the wings of angels in the palms of her hands. A treasure of luminaries in a bowl of black dirt. The only sounds audible were locust and grasshoppers that leaped through the air like children playing hide and seek with the clouds and the growling motors of cars racing by. The land did not reach any homes on the right or the left for at least a mile or two nor were there any houses in front of her. Chelsea remembered feeling lonely and yet the way the trees stretched its branches wide reminded her of a mother’s embrace. Only Forrest stood across from her, a gate closed her into her grandmother’s inheritance, and community spoke like laughter beyond Sara’s womb. She bent her knees and crouched closer to the ground, plucking handfuls of grass from the rich dirt. She had to touch it to make sure that it was real. How could something so beautiful be the result of something so painful? What Grandma Rose left to her would nourish generations of children and her heart ached that Nana would not be here to drink glasses of lemonade on the front porch of their country home or eat tomatoes fresh from the garden. “Rose”. She said it below a whisper and let the smile crease into her face and wrap itself around her cheeks. It had been weeks since she smiled. Nana always knew how to do just that. Amazing how she consoled her even beyond the grave. The woman let the emotion wash over her and the tears race down her face and drip from her lips. The sun bowed its final curtsy before lowering itself into sleep for the night and Chelsea cried for the last time. Her tears all courage shaped in her throat. Finally, the grief had come to an end.

Social Media Intelligence: Why Your Boss is Reading Your Blog

boss-reading-emails

I was reading my scriptures when I decided to check my phone (a habit I’m trying to kick.) As I did so, I saw a post that struck my attention. Colleen, as she always does, posted a link to another great author resource, and I could not wait to get the juicy details of why Authors should watch out for this one dangerous trait from literary agents. As I scanned the article, nodding my head and wondering how long it would take my pizza to finish baking and how the beef sausage I sliced on top was going to be the bomb, I was struck by the following statement:

“In and beyond the writing and publishing industry, the way someone uses social media is often a window into that person’s work attitude and style, and a signpost as to how a potential working relationship will evolve.” – Aine Greaney

I stopped thinking of pizza and thought, “Wow, that is so true!”

This got me thinking about blogs, Facebook and Twitter. I started to think about how we use them all so loosely. I also began to think about businesses or upcoming businesses. As an author, I thought of how being a published author is likened to a business in many ways. Furthermore, this made me think more deeply about the social media world.

The Boss. Who is he? This doesn’t have to be your actual boss but it is someone out there with the potential to take you to that next level. Facebook and Twitter may seem like harmless entities but the fact that professionals are trolling through pages and timelines is no conspiracy theory. For those of us online for fun, have at it. But for those of you seeking to become authors or to use your blogs for anything slightly professional, you may want to consider that the blog posts that go viral are usually the ones we least expect to do so. Personality is key of course. It is always good to let your personality shine through and to let us all know that you’re a real breathing person with passions and concerns and joys just like the rest of us. That personal touch brings people together and builds a bridge of commonality that helps us to get to know one another better, which in turn works well with building professional relationships.

And now we’ve come all the way back around. How you present yourself online should be a representation of who you are, but it should the best part of who you are. Cursing people out on Facebook and engaging in arguments and being nasty to people may be fun now but one day you will grow up. And when that happens you’ll want to explore new things and maybe you’ll even want to put some of those talents to good use. The problem is that the past image of you is still saved in social media files and although you have industry knowledge, Mrs. Smith, your future boss, just can’t get over how vulgar your language is. Mrs. Smith can’t see someone fitting into her communications department who can’t control something as close to them as their own tongues.

article-0-066CB0D00000044D-447_634x431

I’ve actually experienced this myself. A long time friend of mine (who I am not in communication with but who I have known a while) was launching a new business and sought out support. For the sake of identity I’ll just call this person a she. She promoted across all of her social media accounts and the business itself looked really promising and got some good reviews. As for my friend, having known her for about nine years now, I know her to be very intelligent and knowledgeable about that particular field. In fact, I always knew she would be a business person some day. However, as I scrolled through her Twitter timeline, the one with the beautiful website layout and crowdfunding campaign and call to action, the more I scrolled the worse it got. Eventually, I had gone back a couple years and there was everything there from the use of profanity to sexual language. If I was a professional looking to hire someone with her skill set for my company, I would have been instantly turned off. Even as myself I was turned off. It was as if none of the prior things I saw attractive mattered anymore. My advice to my friend is to create a business account specifically for the business itself without linking it to her private account. Sadly, I’m not sure if that will even work this far in the game. The lesson is a brutal one.

In the end, we all enjoy what we do and I don’t want to leave without stating this fact. Whenever I talk professionalism I get feedback that suggest that in the end blogging should be fun. Of course it should be, but I wouldn’t take it lightly. Nothing on the internet can be. Employers and agents search social media accounts, such as blogs and Facebook, because social media is the largest data collection service to date for collecting and gathering intelligence and people tend to be themselves on these platforms more than they actually are in person. Social Media therefore becomes a valuable platform for employers to seek out potential clients in their natural state.

It’s not about being phony and fake, its about being mindful of your behavior. It’s OK to be yourself on social media. In fact, I would hope that you are yourself. Showcase pictures of your family, display the music you like, or speak about something that is passionate to you. However, keep in mind that thousands of people are potentially reading your blogs everyday and one of them, just one of them, may turn out to be your boss.

Note: This is an older post and is in need of much editing! A revision will be applied soon. Thank you for your time!

Social Media Automation – Why I Don’t Use It

file(6)

It probably would make life much easier if I posted to one account and it automatically posted to all of my other social media accounts. There is a way this can be done by enabling social media automation and I am sure the busier I get the more I would be willing. But for right now there are some key reasons I am just not attracted to this strategy.

They Are Different Platforms

I’m probably the only person in the world who does not want to link her social media accounts (including this blog). Those of you who follow me on IG, FB, and Twitter have probably already noticed that I use them as separate entities. I’m not into linking them at this moment. That would be slightly annoying to me actually. This is because for me, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram may be the top 3 Social Media sites active right now, but they are three totally different platforms. This means they require similar but slightly different navigation techniques. Let’s start with Instagram.

Instagram

file(5)

Instagram is all about the image. This, in my opinion, gives it advantages over Facebook and Twitter in the promotional area when it comes to pictures. When you scroll through Instagram, each picture is shown one by one according to your followers most recent uploads. As you scroll through, you cannot help but see them even if you skip through the ones that are not interesting to you. This means there is less distraction here than on the other platforms. Instagram is a go-getter for attention because there is not enough space to browse through anything else outside of that timeline. People can also upload videos, another major attention keeping strategy. While Instagram allows room for wording and descriptions of the pictures, the most important thing is the photo itself. Bold and bright colors that capture and keep people’s attention is a must for IG which makes Book Cover designs and promotional flyers very attractive for authors and they garner lots of attention. Quotes and Meme’s have also become a favorite. Authors can upload pictures of books they are reading, screenshot Amazon reviews, or post quotes from the authors they love. Lots of wording in the form of an Image is not something I would want to upload to IG. Instead, I would much rather use images with wording that stand out. Far as IG is concerned, the most important thing to remember for me is the strategic use of the image.

Twitter

file(4)

Twitter’s restriction on word count is a plus for me. In fact, it is what attracted me to this platform in the first place. It is a fun way to post constant updates and does not take up a lot of time. Twitter is the hub for short promotional shout outs and gives me the opportunity to be creative with words. People’s attention spans are short so its not necessary to be long winded. Instead, authors can boost the visibility of posts using the #hashtag, a social discovery mechanism that is actually taken from the tagging strategy of using keywords that others are also using and networking through those words. Twitter gives you the opportunity to upload photos as well, but it is not the platform for pictures in my opinion. When I scroll through my IG timeline I can instantly see the pictures. When I scroll through my Twitter timeline however, I will either see half of the picture or (via automation) I’ll see a link to the picture file that is uploaded. This is not very attractive or important to me in the moment I am browsing the Twitter timeline. I’d much rather read a short quote or click on a link to an article. Articles, this is another major plus with Twitter. It is so much easier to click on news articles and blog posts from Twitter. In fact, Twitter is the biggest hub for sharing news and taking advantage of real time information. Is there a crisis happening? You are sure to get real time updates through your Twitter feed. Re-tweets also make it easy to share and promote the work of others.

Facebook

8043979-120875522_3-122095019_13-v1

Facebook is the place to be for a combination of all of these things: pictures, family, friends, quotes, news articles, etc. Facebook also does not have a word count limit which gives posts the opportunity to have a longer shelf life, meaning more people are likely to see your post last week on your Facebook profile than your Twitter timeline. Twitter is “What’s Happening Now?” and Facebook is just “What’s Happening?” For authors, Facebook is the place for storytelling, poetry, etc. Because you can write longer posts, you can really go in on showcasing your writing skills because FB is really great when it comes to longer conversations (You can give everyone a taste of your skills 🙂 ). When you publish a popular post (lots of likes, commentary, views) it will stay at the top of the timeline more which will give it lots of attention. In addition, old posts that have new comments will make their way back to the top which means new people will get to see it. Facebook’s major negative is that it is too crowded, or at least to me. There is a lot going on. People are chatting, playing games, watching videos, looking at pictures, and even listening to music through Facebook. Facebook is a large platform by which to expand a network and garner attention for a product but it can also be a show off. Because its such a large platform, people are sometimes less genuine than they should be. Everyone wants to prove that their lives are the best thing since sliced bread even if its not really this way in reality. People also tend to confide in Facebook more than they should, venting thoughts, actions, and family issues that should never be put on display for the world to see. For this reason, I find myself neglecting Facebook a lot unless I really have something important to share. However, I will not completely neglect it as a social media marketing strategy because together, with the use of Twitter, and Instagram, it can create one strong marketing dynamic if used correctly. Facebook is also great for connecting with family and friends whereas Twitter and Instagram opens the door for networking more with professionals and strangers. You are more likely to connect with a family member or someone you know by way of Facebook than the other platforms.

socialab-infographic

Social Media Automation combines these accounts into one, making everything you post on one automatically post to the others and this is cool (for well established businesses it may just be very cool) but right now its just not for me. It may save me time, but it doesn’t give the impression that a real person is behind the computer if every post is automatically generated. It can also get boring at times (at least to me). Right now I would like to continue to use my social media platforms separately. Why? Because they are separate platforms.

Choices

I woke up this morning to this scene in The Matrix Reloaded. I’ll just leave it here:

shapeimage_2

Oracle: We can never see passed the choices we don’t understand.

Neo: You mean I have to choose whether Trinity lives or dies?

Oracle: No, you already made the choice. Now you have to understand it.

– The Matrix Reloaded